Reality and Subjectivity The complex and subjective paradigm applyied to design languages. BRESLAU, Frederico Mestrando; FAAC-UNESP fred@breslau.com.br ROSSI, Dorival Campos; Doutor; FAAC-UNESP bauruhaus@yahoo.com.br WINCK Fº, João Baptista de M.; Doutor; FAAC-UNESP winck@faac.unesp.br ABSTRACT Given recent evidence for the configuration of the so-called reality, explained by the hard sciences ( physics, mathematics ) by the biological ones and by philosophy, this article seeks to give an overview of the contemporary historical moment, from the perspective of design and its symbolic and cognitive signification. So that the relationship between man and his language, his body and his space are recreated through new readings of the field of subjective reality. Based on the notion of free playing, on a non-sense structure as practiced in childhood we seek to produce those alternate ways of producing a sensible design. This work is part of a larger study that seeks to shed light on the mode of production of sensible objects, and it tries to generate new proposals for the construction of the architectural design.
Design: Virtualities, subjectivities, relationships. The sound enters into the silence and fecundates it, establishes a rhythm with the space-time, the same way as the light does with the shadow. At one side we have the music, the word, and on the other side we have visible forms, colors. These ethereal litters interpenetrate and bend themselves to form sonic architectures, the tones of the music and the rhythm of the images. From other cross-breedings of distinct origins we have temperatures, odors, textures, volumes, infinite possibilities which fecundate themselves in a frenzy of infinite connections. They recreate infinitely new relationships, dematerialize, becoming energy once again, to recreate and procreate in other moments and existences. The world of the physical matter, the mass of celestial bodies, the weight of massive agglomerated of atoms in the universe, all of them are breedings of relationships in transit. From the collisions of gases and materials, from the explosions of the “supernova”1 stars, were originated the elements that constitute our bodies. From these confluences emerged the life, an immense field generator of possible probabilities From temperatures and pressure, the more primordial elements that involve us and inhabit in us were created. The iron that reddens our blood was materialized in the last instants of the life of a vanishing star, its death warranted our life. Everything in the universe is transit, is movement, folded, re-folded, unfolded in a unique, dense continuum2 field, without form. We are all part of these fluxes of energy that re-configurate themselves, altering everybody and everything that exists. We are the actualization of an inseparable part of all things, virtual in essence, we materialize ourselves in this form of life. Within all the latent potencies contained in the universe of probabilities. We are crushed, compressed, superposed within these agglomerates of energy that flow through the universe, emerging as an actualization in a given moment of creative flash. Surrounded by these fertile relationships, we are merged in an universe of cognitive inputs of information which collide with us, in this infinite complex, we are intense energy that is compressed, is expanded when interacting with a dense fluid cosmos of possibilities.
1
SUPERNOVA: is a class of stars of dimensions and potency much more superior to our sun, these stars instead of fading within time, they succumb in their own gravitational mass and explode. This process is responsible for the generation of new suns and the creation of material for new planets. 2
DEFINE as continuum the notion of Pierce in “The Logic of Continuity “ where the continuum is a joint of all semiotical dimensions. Here we understand as the plane common to all the informations and relationships contained in the Universe ( Rossi,2004,p.13)
Nietzche already perceived the universe, its relationships of potency, the creation of an infinite scale : “And you know...what is the world for me ?This world, a monster of force, without beginning, without ending, a strong, bronze grandeur of strength... an economy without expenses and losses, but also without increases, or profits...but instead as strength at the same time one and multiple,... eternally changing, eternally recurrent... starting from the simplest to the most multiple, from the quiet, most rigid, from the coldest to the most ardent, wildest, most contradictory with himself, and then one again this dyonisiac world of mine, of the eternally self creation, of the eternally self destruction, without aim, without will. This world is the desire of potency – ad nothing else – And you are also all your own, desire of potency – and nothing else”.3 (Our translation) The world that we feel is created through interactions, we live in a sensible infinite, in an endless reacting space. The cognizable universe being open and dynamic, the unique constant of these realities is the impermanence4, the eternal flux, the instability, the unknown that is impossible to be completely foreseen. Like a river that is never the same, always different, we are transit, that is the essence of our own experience, of our universe. The pre-Socratic philosopher Tales of Mileto in the 7TH century b.C already perceived that the nature of things is liquid ( “... the water is the principle of all things...”) Our apprenticeship, knowledge, conquers are all results of this impermanence, where all the systems are dynamic, fluid, nomads. Shunryu Suzuki, zen philosopher of the 20th century also found out the impermanent nature of all structures : “Because each existence is in constant change, there not exist an individual ego. In fact, the essential nature of each experience is nothing else besides its own change. It is the proper nature of all existence. There not exists a special nature or permanent individual entity for each existence.” These boiling energies construct multiple dynamic realities, and our way of perceiving such forces is our senses, so that our sensibilities are “how” we double this continuum in multiple universes that we will cal reality.5 (Our translation)
3
NIetzsche, F. W., 2001.
4
Capra named those structures as “dissipative structures”, where living systems are necessarily formed by coevolutive open systems trading energy on collective clusters. 5
Suzuki, S., 2009.
REALITIES AND THE DIALECTICAL PROCESS We understand here as “real”, the totality of the universe, the undistinguished summation of all its “data”, so that we find a consequent definition of “reality”, as being one of its faces, a possibility of the real. Reality is a part of its multiple manifestations, activated by the perceptive person. We still conceptualize the reality as a singular form of the truth that overcomes its own truth/falsity dialectic. It is neither true, nor false, it is simply contained in the infinite plan of the real, where exist all the realities, and all are possible. Among all the possibilities of real, to presume the existence of an unique reality, a single way of common connection with the universe that surrounds us, it is to limit our own human condition to a schemata that moves us in the opposite side of our own nature, generator of realities and cognitive fields, generator of floating patterns of subjective reality. Within each human being an unique reality is composed, its references and forms of reading of the complex of the real, are formatted in an intricated game of synapses, an interpretation of the world, impossible of being identical in another human being. They are ethereal and delicate symptoms of relationships between the “outside world” and the “inside world”, mediated by our sensitive organs interpretated by our brain that construct what we perceive The “external thing” is not definitely in its place, depleted of other meanings and relationships, all the possibilities are in this space and movement between “to perceive” and the perceiver, an abysm where realities and also ideas occur. We create in the act of “reading” a complex that surrounds us, some possibilities of reality. To the realities of this nature we will call simply of subjectivities, ephemeral universes, only generated in the act perceived. It is an exercise sensible of the relations of the universe of the perceiver and of the universe perceived This relationship of singular arrangements happen between the two actors, generating in the meantime a new universe that is no more of the perceiver, not also of the perceived, a third universe that is ephemeral in its becoming is created.
It is necessary here to enlarge and define under which syntony we adjust the notion of subjectivity. It takes place in this plane of supra-sensibilities, in a Deleuzian logic. We presume subjectivity as a becoming in Deleuze. A primitive state, ephemeral, that generates structures constituted of relationships. A primitive state, ephemeral, that generates structures constituted of relatioships. A state activated only in movement, in the syntony that is established between two actors when they perceive one another and melt generating a poetical state for an intense and unbearable moment. So that the product of a subjective construct can only be understood when its connections are understood. THE ACT OF PLAYING AND THE PROJECT This act of free playing with outside and inside things, can also be called virtualities, reality existing in potency, latency in form of concepts, lucubrations, projects, designs that form and actualize the outside universe, of the things tangible by the senses. But first is necessary to expose the quality of this “free play”, that we assume as a major presupposition for creating a sensible design. The word “play” in the english language is full of open connections to multiple meanings, with association among others with meanings such as games, recreational activities, competitions, relations. The word “Play” consists on a wide range of significances, so we must define which quality of play in order to don’t miss the focus of this essay. We must assume here that this free playing is understood as a non-hierarchical structure, not submitted to rules which make it differs from a game. In a game players must assume to exist winners and losers, a ultimate goal and punishment when rules are broken, or even a or reward. The intention of this free play is to navigate into the poetical function of the language, articulate with signals, data, intentions. As a child that emerges into it self and simultaneously into the object that beholds, projecting impossibles worlds just by conjecturing about the possibilities contained, folded there. If we presume that this design proposed here produces through subjectivations, then we treat with a design of relationships, that surpasses a design objective strictu sensu, estimate creator of things, passes also through a design of signs, creator of thoughts about the things and starts to operate in the order of production of realities, to produce relationships between all things. A design prior to this structure, generated from a rational thought, was called as “problems of project” that was the agreement of the role of the designer. His role was only of representing and giving a meaning to the external world, giving form to the objects in the manner of lines of production, turning them linked, in a closed logic.
This design was oriented toward the material, to the actual, formatted by form and function, in a chronological one-way linearity, was worried with the visual representation as the creator of universal truths, about how we communicate and structure our languages. A designer who seeks the subjectivities as a process of production of things, has as a premiss all a new configuration of reality, open to the subjectivations, objects of a boiling nature, in transit. A fundamental premiss to propose these sensible objects is to presume that to perceive is no more passive, no interactive, statical, to actuate as a interagentcreator, to know through the senses becomes an act of pure invention. To invert the classical logic of senses, to gain all a new reactive sensibility which generates products when perceived.. According to Pimenta6, the act of playing can be indicated as an example of sensible construction, that dialogues with outside and inside elements, producing new realities. We are trying here to propose and amplify the logic of playing presented by Pimenta, as a possible logic of construction of objects of design. It is inherent to the act of free playing to articulate with signs superposed over any surface, literally playing with possibilities that seem to emerge from the inside of the proper things 7updating their structure without need of a material alteration. It is a “recycling� of a new cycle of semiotical order. Independent of of its objective structure, what makes it alter its form is that vision focuses the object, making hidden dimensions appear in their relationships of meaning.The internal and virtual instruments of the project alter, thus altering the proper product, its actualization. In simultaneous moments, superposed, multiple possibilities articulate in a notion of existence of these dynamic dimensions, where the inside and the outside spaces are melted.. The project is produced, updated and recycled in real-time, extracting things of the proper thing of its foldings, unfoldings and re-foldings, a metamethod produced during the course that plays freely with possibilities. To elaborate this metamethod is, according to Rossi, to understand the dynamics that extract, make emerge the structures with a method particular to each
6
Pimenta, E. D. M., 1997a p.4.
7
Rossi, D. C., 2003 p.157.
“Meanwhile the method worries to elect rules to submit the objects of research to an internal coherence, the metamethod, we could say, worries to elect rules capable to extract the “ thing out of the proper thing”, that is, observes not the effect of the phenomenon, but the proper phenomenon independent of the causes or effects.Meanwhile the method imposes a coherence, the metamethod exposes the quality of the things.”8(Our translation) The act of free playing seems to offer the possibility of access to the realities folded within themselves, where their own folds generate new structures, a meta-method producing objects.This act of playing of free relationships, projecting portals to dimensions in and out of the designer. Recurring once more to the pre-Socratic philosophers Tales of Mileto announced :... all the things are full of gods...”9. So that we understand that play, is like this design that dialogues e activate latencies occult within the form. This already appears in our first infancy with the cognitive capacity of simulate and represent any model, even fantastic, applying it in an immediate form, without the need of intermediation, without a means, where the power of transformation is only in the act of perceiving the environment and modify it in its latent and virtual state It is in the act of playing with time, form and space among the things outside and inside that a project is made, where the imagination produces folds of space-time within the observer, playing with infinite relationships between one thing and another. DESIGN : EMERGENT REALITIES AND TRANSDISCIPLINARITY The emergency of these possible realities, in the contemporary context, have been ex-plained and presented as a new projectile need, thanks to the modern technological advents, which, like extensions of our own senses10, surpass their first functionality and created a new universe relational cybrid (cybernetic+hybrid)11 in which we learn to expand us sensorially, discovering the possibility of simultaneous experiences, the superposition of several realities to generate new spaces and rhythms. Since Graham Bell, dedicating at the end of 19th century an universe in real time thanks to the creation of the telephone, till J.C.R. Licklider, in the middle of the 20th century developing studies in computation which culminated with the creation of the internet, there aroused in the society the notion of an universe multiple of simultaneous existences. 8
Ibid
9
Aristóteles, 2006.
10
Lévy, P., 1997.
11
Beiguelman, G., 2006.
We observe our universe in a non-linear manner, open to edition and reconstruction, where we abandoned the sense of reading of time as a unique way in an ascendent sense, to multiple ways, of non hierarchic reading.12 It is necessary to understand with more profundity and amplitude the projectual possibilities which the designer is capable of articulate, managing in multiple universes, amplifying the capabilities of the real, things that the traditional method did not understood, or furnish the tools to situate himself in this dynamic world of relationships. A field of action is disclosed for the designer, that surpasses the simple objective of generate products, limited and poor of connections objects. The role of the designer is since then to project under a transdisciplinary method of relationships and proliferation of concomitant readings, collapsing simultaneously to generate a production of another order, sensible-reagent, aggregating new entries of information(inputs) to generate new constructs. Pimenta finds out that our planet is in a unrestrainable process of superposition of human knowledge, all turned to trans-disciplinarity “The planet went in the direction of transdisciplinarity. This picture of disturbance, in the dynamic sense of the term, transcultural and transnational, establishes new mathematical, physical, biological and chemical laws among others, revealing a new human manner of knowledge and making old questions emerge constantly.”13(Our translation) To awake the interest for this universe means to discover occult faces of our own condition.When we propose a method, we raise questions that emerge from the natural form of the social complex, explained by philosophical and scientifical questions. The philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, propose actions in the interstice, that operate in the interval between the one who reads and what that is read, extracting subjectivities from multiple universes. This new configuration of the real, can redefine all the notion of project, process and product. In one more profound investigation of its consequences it can recreate the proper method of “design” itself, indicating other desires. Fundamental questions are provoked, besides the conventional questions of methodological design. These questions refer to the notions of reality, truth and even about what is the existence.
12
Flusser, V., 1983
13
Pimenta, E.D. M., 1997a, p.1
These questions remained for hundreds of years, and become to be pertinent under the optical of the method of production of interactive-reactive objects,in a universe of languages that we digitalize.And in which the simulation and the emulation, present in the daily actions in our society (social networks based on internet, video-games, simulators in general, softwares of augmented reality)14, call into question what is real, correct, finite, true.15
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS IN PROCESS The statements of this work refer to the contemporary literature of those who think of what they read about these multiple realities, generated by the new technological events, in a very plural manner and passible of modifications, actualizations, interactions in real time, like in the computer models and in the global social networks electronically mediated. All these technological displays generated by an increasing society and accelerated rhythm of relationships, emerge with fundamental questions, under the perspective of interactivity and updating of the reality. These tools are generators of entirely new universes and fertile of possibilities of creation. Starting from a technological scenery, but not limiting the support as a mediator tool of the technique, we try here to expand the conscience of the possibilities of cognitive alteration in the human being, his spectre of conscience and cognition that allowed the generation of these new tools. To think about the new methodological possibilities in design, is to restore its occult connections. This work is oriented into multiple directions, first of all to limit and fundament this context in which the subjective act of playing is situated, secondly to present how this happens, and in third place to present a proposal of product that meets with all these thoughts. It is natural the capability of doing for the designer. Thus we propose not only talk about the thing, but explicit it, turning into reality a possibility of construction. Thus we believe to construct or at least indicate new methods of a production that is presented as a design of relationships.
14
Cf: Cf: XI SYMPOSIUM ON VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY, SVR 2009 Last access december 26th 2009 http://grv.inf.pucrs.br/svr2009/calls/calls.html 15
Pinheiro, O. J., 2008.
All these folded possibilities proposed in this work, were without other objectives than the one of showing how much of potency, of life is contained in the playful movement of the act of playing. If we can create so many gods as we are able to do, then we will play also with these theoretical connections to find out something else more. In this theoretical process of meanings we will present so many others theorists and thinkers who will show that this process is a continuum of life, in pure creative latency, in the project of becoming.
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